Criminal Negligence
By DOUGLAS LUMMIS
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刑事責任の追求
刑事責任の追求
東海村の臨界事故は、JCOがことの重大性を
認識していなかったために被害が大きくなった。
事故のない世界などありえないのだから
原子力発電所の存在自体が問われて当然ではないか。
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From the recent nuclear accident in Tokai, Ibaraki Prefecture, we can learn a
lot.
One thing we can learn is that both the company and the government care
more for their reputations than for safety. The reason given for
withholding information, and for not evacuating people outside a 350-meter
radius, was "to avoid panic."
Think. Panic means "extreme fear." It is what people may feel when they
are in great danger. The people near the nuclear plant at Tokai were in fact
in great danger.
But the nuclear elites (shall we call them "NUKES"?) didn't want the
public to know how great that danger was. As a result, probably more people
were exposed to radiation than would have been if the public had been
warned promptly and honestly.
But the fact that the NUKES would risk people's lives to minimize bad publicity is not so surprising. They've done that before. More surprising is
the degree of their incompetence. Most people suppose that nuclear
technicians know what they are doing. Now it's clear: They don't.
In particular, NUKES don't understand the significance of what they do.
They haven't grasped the nature of the situation they have gotten themselves
into. They had no plan for what to do in case of an accident.
First they simply waited, hoping the thing would go away, like a bad dream.
Then they called for outside help. Somebody thought of calling in the U.S.
military, though what it could do was unclear. After a while, NUKES remembered
to drain the cooling water from the building, which helped some.
Then they persuaded some workers to carry sandbags and stack them around the outside wall, which helped some more. Each worker who did this of
course received some radiation. Then, 13 days after the accident, somebody
noticed that the air vents were still on. So these were turned off.
The picture in the newspaper of the sandbags piled up all higgledy piggledy
around the build
ing would be comic if the matter weren't so serious. Now they say it's all
safe. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't go near the place, no matter what
they say.
The newspapers also reported that many of the people who were told to stay
inside their homes kept their air conditioners on, because it was hot. What kind of mentality is this? Have the people in that town been fed so much
propaganda saying nuclear power is safe, that they are unable to believe the
danger is real even when the plant is spewing out a cloud of neutrons?
I imagine someone saying, "Oh, sure, it's dangerous, but it can't be so
dangerous that we should make ourselves uncomfortable."
Now some of the nuclear power elites are being investigated for criminal
negligence. This is as it should be. Nuclear power is criminal negligence.
There is no such thing as a world without accidents. You build nuclear
power plants, you get nuclear accidents. It is precisely criminal negligence
to build them at all.
Shukan ST: Nov. 12, 1999
(C) All rights reserved
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